Signal to Noise

[Hazuki Tsukimiya]

The door slid open noiselessly, but Kyousuke’s eyes rose to meet hers all the same. ‘Hello, father,’ said Hazuki lightly, stepping inside her father’s office and closing the door softly behind her. He looked tired, but then that was becoming the norm given the circumstances in the world of the living.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he replied, setting his brush down, a wry smile finding its way onto his lips. ‘Did your parents never teach you to knock?’
Hazuki returned the smile, looking in an instant very much like her mother. ‘Mother taught me to always make my presence a surprise, actually,’ she stated matter-of-factly as she crossed the office and stooped to give him a light kiss on the cheek.
‘Hm,’ he intoned, ‘that sounds very much like her.’

She knew he was simply humoring her; she had always played at moving around silently ever since she was a child, but try as she might, it never seemed as though she could ever sneak up on her father.

‘Would you like me to make you some tea?’ she asked, already halfway to the little alcove where her father kept a small tea service.
‘Yes, that would be nice,’ he said, stretching as he leaned back in his chair. ‘Make a cup for your mother, too.’
Hazuki shot him a questioning glance over her shoulder. ‘Is she on her way?’
‘Probably,’ he shrugged, then frowned. ‘I should ask you now, are you hungry?’
‘No thank you, I had lunch at the mess before I left.’
His expression cleared up immediately, and he rose from his seat to open the large window behind him. ‘Good. Then you can tell me why you’ve come to visit while the water boils.’
‘I’ve been sent here to pick up a report.’
‘What, from me?’ he asked, turning back to her, silhouetted in the brilliant blue sky outside. ‘I don’t have any reports to send to the First.’
‘No,’ she sighed, ‘from someone downstairs.’
‘Then why the visit? You’ve always tried not to bother me when I’m at work, despite my repeated insistence that you are always welcome, no matter the reason.’
‘It’s just—’ she started, unsure of where to even begin. ‘Like this, for example. I’m here to collect a report that an unseat could have come and collected.’
Kyousuke seemed to weigh that, gazing at his daughter as he leant back to rest on the windowsill. ‘You feel Kasumi doesn’t recognize your talents?’
Hazuki shook her head and turned back to the pot, which had begun to steam. ‘No, she recognizes my talents. But she’s deliberately sidelining me with these... These meaningless tasks as if to simply keep me occupied.’
‘The Commander is a very busy woman, Hazuki. You know that. Whatever it is you’re doing, I’m sure it’s helping her a great deal.’

A soft breeze rolled in unseen through the window, gently tousling both father and daughter’s hair and bringing with it a faint smell of spring, and Hazuki sighed again.
‘I just wish I understood why this was happening. Maybe mother will know.’
‘We’ll ask her when she gets here.’
A pair of pale, delicate arms snaked their way across Kyousuke’s shoulders from seemingly nowhere, and a teasing voice whispered softly in his ear.
‘But she is already here, mon coeur.’
He couldn’t help but smile widely at being caught out yet again, and he turned his head to kiss his wife hello.
‘You opened the window,’ Lina laughed, ‘you were expecting me this way?’
‘Lucky guess.’
‘Hm, you are lucky, yes, but this...’ She narrowed her eyes at him playfully, ‘I think this was not luck.’ She turned to her daughter—not yet unwrapping herself from her husband to leave his side—and smiled. ‘Come, chérie, embrasse-moi. I have missed you so.’
‘Hello, maman,’ said Hazuki, deftly taking the pot off the heat before coming over to give her mother a kiss on the cheek. ‘I’ve missed you too.’
‘Are you hungry? Would you like your father to cook you something?’
Hazuki and Kyousuke exchanged a glance, and Hazuki shook her head with a grin. ‘No, mother. I ate earlier.’

Finally, Lina unravelled her arms from her husband’s neck and slid down from the windowsill. ‘Then there is only one thing we must discuss. What do you and your father wish to ask me?’
‘Hazuki seems to be under the impression she is being held back by the Commander,’ explained Kyousuke, motioning for Hazuki to take a seat at his desk while he moved to finish preparing the tea. ‘I believe the word she used was sidelined.’
‘And why would Kasumi do this to you, chérie?’
‘I don’t know, I— I can’t think of any reason. She knows what I can do, she knows I can be trusted, she just... Won’t even let me try.’
Kyousuke finished with the tea, and brought two cups over to them, placing one in front of Hazuki on the desk, and presenting the other to Lina before returning for his own. Hazuki, meanwhile, stared down into her cup, looking forlorn.
‘I don’t understand why I’m even in the First Division. Why not here? Or with you in the Second, mother? Or even the Eleventh? Why take me under her wing like that?’

Kyousuke and Lina’s eyes met, and something passed imperceptibly between them behind Hazuki’s turned back.

‘The First is for those who are exceptional, Hazuki.’ There was a soothing tone in Lina’s voice, something soft in her otherwise sharp blue eyes as she gazed at her daughter. ‘And you are exceptional. You are in the right place, at least for now.’
‘Trust the Commander as she trusts you, sweetheart.’
‘For how long?’ There was only the faintest trace of sulking in Hazuki’s tone.
Kyousuke sipped his tea, and Lina reached out to stroke Hazuki’s hair reassuringly.
‘At least a while longer.’

Their conversation took a lighter turn after that, both mother and father curious to hear how Hazuki had been since last they saw her and how she was managing life at the First’s barracks. Was she doing alright? How was the food? Was she sure she didn’t want to come back to the house? (‘Such a thing, it is easily arranged,’ proclaimed Lina) In the end, however, Hazuki admitted that while far from perfect, it was a very good experience for her, and she would be remaining there for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, she would need to get back to the real reason she had come to the Eighth.

‘Perhaps I can help you find who you’re looking for. Or, at the very least, have someone escort you.’
‘Thank you, father, but I’ll manage. Just telling me where he might be is enough. Someone named...’ She reached into her sleeve for something, producing a small slip of paper. ‘Junya Ryoji, eighth seat.’
‘Ah yes, Ryoji. Analyst. You’ll find him in the South Wing. I brought him with me from the Second when I earned my haori.’
‘When you left me all alone, you mean,’ teased Lina.
‘My replacement is ten times the lieutenant I ever was,’ teased Kyousuke right back.
Lina sniffed. ‘You flatter her. But not unduly. You are correct, as usual, my love.’

Kyousuke smirked, clearing the cups away. ‘Better get going, Hazuki, I need to speak with your mother about... Work.’
With a light hop to her feet, Hazuki, now in a much better mood, flitted over to first her mother for a goodbye kiss—‘goodbye, maman,’—and then to her father—‘goodbye, father,’ before heading for the door. Just before she left, she turned back to the both of them, standing together in front of the window once again.

‘Next time, come visit me at the First.’

Then she was gone.

For a time, Kyousuke and Lina stood together in silence, faint looks of shared pride on their faces, until at last Lina broke the silence, certain there was no way they would be overheard.
‘I don’t know what I would do if anything were to happen to her.’
‘Kasumi will continue to keep her out of harm’s way, just as we asked.’
She reached for his hand, intertwining her fingers with his. ‘I cannot bear to see her unhappy.’
‘Times being what they are, I’d prefer her unhappy to hurt.’
That, it seemed, was satisfactory to Lina.
‘When everything blows over, both here and among the living,’ Kyousuke reassured her, ‘she will find her place.’


* * *


Hazuki was no stranger to the Eighth, of course, and making her way to the South Wing went without a hitch—it was rare for anyone in her parents’ divisions to not recognize her, and she received more than a few friendly waves or greetings, all of which she returned politely as she passed by. Most of these people had known her, or at the very least, known of her since she was very small. A few of them asked if she was looking for anyone in particular, and they were all able to point her in the right direction, until at last someone simply pointed at a group of Shinigami standing some distance away. ‘That’s him there, the tired-looking one with the ponytail.’
She thanked her, and made her way over to what appeared to be some sort of impromptu thoroughfare meeting, led by the very man she was here to see.

‘Junya Ryoji?’ she asked, finding an opportune gap in the conversation. ‘Hazuki Tsukimiya, First Division. I’ve been sent to collect a report.’

 

[Junya Ryoji]

"No, that's not what we're looking for. Yeah, yes, I know what the title on the report says, it's not it. Because if you open it --" with a grin, he makes a show out of slowly opening the thick, string-bound mass of pages, their front page stamped red with the title MORTALITY RATES YEAR 592, and flips a few pages down, "you see this number here, at the beginning of the serial? That tells you the reporting standard they used. The reporting standard, in turn, right, tells you what the numbers here mean. There have been about six different standards for mortality rate measurements since the Gotei actually started measuring them. You only need to worry about, like, three of them. But this one, standard four, is weird. There's a long story here, but these aren't actually the un-adjusted counts. To get those --"

And so on. The half-circle of people around him under the wooden porch outside his office, are sampling a distribution of "level of attention paid to his speech" with a mean of around "one-quarter-listening". People perk up as reports are asked for, or edits returned, by name -- "Nice job, Anno. 'Reconnaissance' is spelled like this, but otherwise, good." -- or when large gesticulations call attention to a detail that everyone should hear.

Junya doesn't much mind the detached atmosphere, or the fact that, as he estimates, only about five percent of any given thing he's saying is going to stick. All of the work his unseats do funnels through him, anyway, and he's been at this game much longer. Most of these kids are only here for a short stint before they get transferred to another duty station in the Eighth, or get sent back to Earth. They're tired and overworked. Long ago, the analyst corps in the Eighth was made up of six seated officers, and was staffed by something like a hundred unseated men, many of them on permanent assignment. There were twenty souls in front of Junya, and only two of them had been with him for more than a year.

"So, good effort on the counts for those decades. Let's, uh..." Junya pauses, flipping over the stack of haphazardly arranged notes in his hand, looking for the next order of business. Too much to do, too little time to even really plan what to do effectively. At the corner of his eyes, he sees a figure shuffling through the crowd -- someone showing up late, probably, no problem, he starts racking his brain to think about who he didn't give their report back -- until he hears his name called by a crisp, professional voice.

He looks up. A young woman, grey eyes, uniform well-cut and postured. His mind starts running. Looks vaguely familiar, but not from here. A bit too sharp, too well-put together for the Eighth. Someone from the First, Thirteenth? She says his name.

"Yeah, that's me, hi." An introduction is made. Oh. Something shifts slightly in his heart when he hears her name. It's the careerist part of his mind, waking up from its usual slumber. That high up in the First already, it thinks. What are you doing? She looks even younger than he had remembered. They'd never met, but he had seen her at the periphery of a division meeting once or twice. Something is about to pounce on his old heart. But he feels a deep tiredness in his bones, and the feeling in his chest unknots itself while the thought slips away.

He smiles. The lines in his face grow sharper as he does. He bows casually, still leaned against the wall outside his office. "Great to make your acquaintance. Welcome back." He looks at her a bit puzzled. "Sorry, a report? Did they, uh, happen to tell you..." Junya flips through his scattered notes again for a few moments before snapping. "Oh, yeah, that one. Yes, definitely have it, just, uh--"

Junya looks out at the gaggle of soldiers still in front of him. Gazes are being directed thousands of miles away, necks are being scratched, gaits being shifted from one leg to the other. "Alright, that's it for today, get out of here. But hey, I need that next round of counts done in two days, and start reading up about the Mapping Protocol if you're new, alright?," he yells as the crowd quickly disperses into the surrounding courtyard and galleys. "There will be a quiz. There will be no hesitation on my part to throw balls of paper at your head if you screw up. Go."

He turns toward Hazuki, and gestures for her to follow him into his office. It's a small room that is organized in a manner that, many generations later, some inhabitants of Earth will begin to politely describe as "professorial". Mountains of paper are stacked on Junya's desk, forming a craggy range that folds into a small basin near where his chair sits, clearly formed by the absent-minded force of his arm pushing for space to write. The entire back of the office is filled with books of all different bindings and sizes. There are more books on a smaller bookshelf made of deal, on top of which rests a tea set. In a corner, there's a bin of rolled-up maps of varying yellowness, next to a wastebin reaching critical capacity. A decently-sized window lets in plenty of natural light from the courtyard.

There are two chairs in front of the desk. Junya pulls one of them out for Hazuki before turning toward the larger bookcase behind his desk. "Just need a few moments to look for it. Sorry about the confusion earlier. I had figured the Lieutenant would send somebody to pick it up first, and then hand it over to you all. But they've seen the drafts, I'm sure everything is square. There are only a couple of minor differences in this copy anyway. Did they tell you if they needed any supplemental materials, other resources? Happy to get them pulled from the Archives."

"Can I offer you some tea? I had a pot on a while ago." He feels the pot. It's gone cold. He curses under his breath before grabbing a match, lighting the charcoal on a small round stove. His attention returns to the books; he lets loose a long yawn.

"Life in the First treating you well? Good first posting? I hear the campus is really beautiful." Junya thinks about making conversation by talking about her father: saying something like how much he's enjoyed working under him in the Eighth, asking jokingly about what it was like to grow up with a dad like that. Something tells him not to.

 

[Hazuki Tsukimiya]

Ryoji seemed, at first meeting, scatterbrained. Not necessarily the kind of scatterbrained that an incompetent would embody, but the kind that stemmed from being spread a little thin. Too many pots on the stove, her father might say. Hazuki would even have gone so far as to hazard that it very likely wasn’t even his own fault, but times being what they were, well, having a lot going on was probably more common than not. At first, she kept quiet, electing to take the sober, taciturn route when faced with the barrage of words launched at her, offering only a patient shake of her head when he asked if she had any more details.

The group he had been speaking with dissipated, and Hazuki felt not entirely unlike a rock in a stream as they flowed past her, giving her a wide berth though each and every one offered a deferential nod or greeting as they slid past. She chalked it up to a combination of several things, but she wasn’t sure if they were being most deferential to her, or to her father by proxy. Regardless, it didn’t really matter; the proper respect was given, and the proper respect was returned. Whatever uncertainty she had displayed with her parents was gone now, carefully tucked away out of sight.

She carefully studied the other officer as he led her into his office, remembering what her father had offhandedly mentioned. Hazuki wasn’t quite sure if she thought his mannerism was affected or genuine; there was a strange disconnect between the way he walked and the way she had observed him conduct his meeting moments ago—one disciplined and professional, the other relaxed and affable. Either way, the interior of his workspace seemed to suggest she had been spot-on with her earlier assessment: this was a man with too many things going on at once.

She ignored the chair he offered her, peering instead at the contents of the shelves as Ryoji rummaged around, first among the books and then briefly busying himself with his teapot. Volumes upon volumes with titles denoting concepts varying from familiar to wholly alien, and she absentmindedly replied in a tone she hoped wouldn’t come across as altogether too dismissive.
‘Just the report will do, thank you.’

Her gaze shifted to the desk and subconsciously began categorizing the title of every tome or report she could lay her eyes on, and it certainly seemed there were quite a few different themes present, several little archipelagos of concepts and ideas, some tangentially related but many completely disconnected from one another. She was interrupted by his attempt at small talk, but she had seen enough either way, so she decided to be polite and indulge him.

‘It’s as good a place as any,’ she replied, glancing out the window at the courtyard. ‘The work is varied, the people are good at it. Even now, it feels like everyone’s doing their best. It’s reassuring. But the grounds...’ Half a smile crept onto her lips, as if recalling some fond old memory. ‘They don’t hold a candle to the Second’s gardens.’

Her cold grey eyes flicked back to Ryoji, the the memory and the smile evaporating. ‘I’m told you were in the Second Division. That you transferred here at around the same time your captain did. Was there any particular reason for that?’

 

[Junya Ryoji]

Just the report, please and thank you. Yeah, she was First, alright. Not a problem. Not every professional interaction needs to be a heart-to-heart, unless of course, all powers in heaven and earth help you, you run into a loyal soldier of the Thirteenth.

He smiles at the mention of the gardens. "No, that's true, isn't it," he says, slowly, "hard to beat." Not quite wistfully, but not quite with pain, either, he remembers a night spent paralyzed on one of the cold stone roads in one of the garden's thickets. Training never stopped.

Was there a reason he left for the Second? "Yeah, there was. It was a good opportunity."

He turns around for a second to feel the tea pot with the back of his hand. Only lukewarm, still. "When I came out of the Academy, the Second was the place for me, no question. I was, what's the word. Gung-ho? As any of them. I was definitely a bit more, uh, intense, back then. And that was good, it helped my career."

"But eventually you realize that, that intensity, doesn't always translate into real change. You feel powerful when you put on the Second Black," he almost hesitates at that phrase, feeling discomfort at revealing somewhat of a term-of-mystery in his old division, before remembering who he's talking to, "or maybe you feel like that when you get called out for some strange mission. It forces you to think, to always be learning, to be ready for anything. You feel like you're a lever for change. And that's appealing for a time, definitely."

"But I realized I liked the intelligence work I was doing, and I was good at it. When I heard the captain was leaving, I asked if I could tag along, and he said yes. It felt like a fresh start. When a new leader takes the reigns somewhere, there's always interesting work to be done."

His hand reaches for a spine about mid-way through the lower section of the bookshelf. It's entitled LONGITUDINAL QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF SOUL POPULATION DYNAMICS UNDER PERTURBATION AND PLAUSIBLE CAUSAL MECHANISMS: A STUDY OF THREE CASE PERIODS. Three sets of years are listed under the long headline: 145 to 180 AD, 520 to 560 AD, and 730 to 740 AD. It's about four inches thick, and Junya has to exercise a bit of effort in pulling it out.

"Here we go." He grasps the thick, bound report, more like a packet, really, and with a bit of a heave hands it over to Hazuki. "Sorry for the weight. If the script was any smaller it would have been really hard to read."

"Anyway, short answer to your question. I came because I like this stuff. And you know, despite everything," he looks at his desk again, the paper mountains still tall and self-assured in their alpine form, then turns back to Hazuki, "I still do. I feel like this is where I can make the most impact."

Nothing that Junya has said is inauthentic. It's not even not the truth. Everything he's said comes from a place of certain feeling: he does like this work, when it comes down to it. He was excited to leave with her father. That's why it's so easy to give a speech like this, extemporaneously, and practice it over a couple of hundred years. People hear the inflection in your voice, see the gleam in your eye, and they leave you alone, satisfied. Positive feedback.

"Anyway. I'm sure you had similar feelings about choosing your division, right? We can only do what seems right. Careers are long, weird things." He looks back at the report. "Oh, also, are you going to be briefing anybody on this? The executive summary is a bit technical for this one. Happy to help."

 

[Hazuki Tsukimiya]

She hefted the veritable flagstone she had been handed, peering at the cover sheet. Dry. There was no way the Commander—or anyone else at the First, for that matter—was going to read this. So much for being a great help. She made no attempt at hiding the faint disgust at the realization, tucking the report under her arm firmly as she listened to Ryoji’s explanation. She certainly understood what he was saying, but it was so fundamentally disconnected from her own experience that she had to fight back... What? A scoff? A sneer?

It wasn’t that his perspective was incorrect—it was probably a fairly common one, after all—so much as seemed like the polar opposite to everything Hazuki knew about herself, her origins, and indeed the nature of her existence.

She bit down on it, hard, and shook her head. ‘No, there won’t be any briefing. Just a handover; whatever they need, they’ll be able to find on their own. Thank you.’

She half-turned, as if to leave, but stopped herself short. ‘I was never given a choice.’ It felt almost like a retort. The palm of her off-hand fell instinctively to the pommel of her zanpakutō, the cool metal soothing her. ‘I was assigned to the First Division, per the Commander’s orders. My time in the Academy was a formality.’ She looked back at his desk, at the shelves, took in the room once more. ‘You call this a career, and maybe you approach it like one. You dabble in killing, maybe lose your taste for it, then decide to dabble in something else. Plenty of things to do in the Gotei, after all.’ Finally, her gaze fell back on Ryoji, something indecipherable in her eyes.

‘But it’s different for me. There is no time before I was a Shinigami. I have no career plans. And this iteration of the Gotei is simply one that has been erected to comfort people who... Dabble. People are quick to forget that the only thing that matters, the only thing that truly defines us, is this.’ She tapped her finger on the hilt at her waist. ‘Ultimately, the only thing that will ever, truly, make an impact is your sword.’

It was an odd sort of realization, putting it into words like that. Suddenly Kasumi’s actions seemed to make a lot more sense to Hazuki—at least insofar as her placement was concerned. Let others worry about trying to fit neatly into a little compartment.

 

[Junya Ryoji]

His eyebrows raise, in an expression of concern, when she turns back -- caught off guard. He listens quietly to what Hazuki has to say. A formality, I'm sure, something inside of him quips. He smacks the thought away, hard.

Junya looks at Hazuki's face for a moment. His gaze is searching, then almost pregnant with some words. He looks away, before his face takes a softer, neutral expression.

His body turns back toward his desk. This time around, he doesn't need to search. His body instinctively reaches for a drawer, whose handle he twists open. The interior is well arranged: a few simple, neatly stacked piles of reports. Each one thin, not more than a few centimeters. He delicately pulls one of the pamphlets off the top.

Junya turns back to Hazuki. "That sword. I'm sure you're great with it. It is your birthright." He places the pamphlet in his hand on top of his report. "Here's a bunch of people who had the same thought." Casualties, from the last quarter. The names are inked small and thin.

"Or maybe they didn't. Doesn't much matter, I think. That's what their purpose was made to be: their swords. Of course, that's our charge, right? Ease the passage. Maintain the balance. That is who we are."

"But here we are, in this office. It would certainly be more fair if we were out there, with our fellow soldiers. Maybe we'd do better than they did. How many Hollows will fall under your blade? Ten? A hundred? A thousand? Or maybe you'll serve by defending the Gotei from the enemies inside of it. They're there, definitely."

He takes a step forward, positioning himself between Hazuki and his desk, and nods at her scabbard. "Before you take your sword up, ask yourself why you're picking it up. What it would take to make you put it back down."

Junya turns back to his bookshelf, pouring himself a cup of tea. He blows on the steaming cup, before taking a hearty sip. "In the meantime, I'll be here. Trying to figure out how to make our swords count, so we can serve in something resembling peace. We used to, a long time ago now."

"Thank you, Officer Tsukimiya. Will that be all?"

 

[Hazuki Tsukimiya]

Finally, she could help herself no longer. Her father’s subordinate or not, whatever reasons she had for keeping her exchange with this man professional paled in comparison to the monumental stupidity of the words pouring out of his mouth. In some vague, undefined corner of her consciousness she recognized that there may be consequences on a purely familial level, but she didn’t care.

She laughed. Not a polite laugh, and not as if she were reacting to some joke or anecdote. This was a haughty, derisive laugh, and her mirth didn’t reach her flinty grey eyes.

‘Ah, more reports. Of course. Why act when you can simply collate? Why do something about the problem if you can spend weeks, or maybe even months on—’ she hefted the report she was carrying, peering at the title again, ‘—writing a thousand pages that nobody will ever read about what happens when people die. We already know. Just as I’m sure the names in those lists belong to people who knew what the risks were. If they weren’t prepared to face them, they should’ve stayed in Rukongai where they belonged.’ She couldn’t keep the sneer off her delicate features. ‘We aren’t flower gods. We don’t wield sunshine cutters. Not very bright to sign up for an army expecting peacetime to last forever. Kill or be killed. It’s not any more complicated than that.’

She spun on her heel, her dark hair flaring out. She paused, settling back into her usual collected self. Took a breath. A thought struck her, and she smirked.

‘I’ll let you get back to your reporting standards and spelling mistakes.’

The door didn’t make a sound as it slid closed behind her.